As if I needed more confirmation that my thought routines fall outside the bell curve, a recent magazine article explained how most “normal” people shop for cars, and I found myself flummoxed. My priorities were not to be found on the list at all.
Price is the most important issue to these people, followed by comfort, and finally safety. I admit price has a place near the top of my priority stack, but I would argue that “value” is more important than price. Comfort is not a concern of mine, since every car comes with a seat, and any chair is more comfortable than standing. Especially in a moving car. Similarly, safety in this case is exclusively passive safety (things like aribags and crumple zones) while I am more concerned with active safety items like visibility, agility, and power. Clearly, then, my priorities are not vendable, and not only because I like exactly two new cars. I hold cars to a different standard than most new car buyers. I search out the cars that provide a unique driving experience, regardless of price, comfort, or safety.
I know I am outside the norm because I get excited about cars that nobody should have any good feelings about. Cars that will make normal people cry with frustration because they just want to go home after another miserable day at work. Cars for whom jokes are told. Things like “you let the smoke out of the wires,” or “I went to the junkyard wanting a hubcap for a Jaguar, and the man said that sounds like a fair trade” or “it’s reliable as a cheesecloth condom.” Cars that have been called lemons, or crap cans, or just British. But deriding the simple engineering failings of these cars is selling them short. Most of the time, it is not an engineering shortcoming, but a management problem that ruined an otherwise brilliant automobile. There was a point at British Leyland when the people building the cars intentionally sabotaged them, just to piss off corporate officers. Old European cars had bad plastics, little power, and even a propensity to spontaneously combust, but I tend to like them more than my neighbors new Nissan something or another. I’m sure the Nissan is comfortable, safe, reliable, and economical. But it is so bland, it proves the guy has no interest in cars, despite the fact that he replaces his car exponentially more often than I do.
I am not a masochist, but I like driving a car that may, at any moment, fail catastrophically. With an engine so highly strung, that its internal combustion may wink to external combustion with the slightest provocation. A car that was clearly intended to be driven quickly, built to be lithe and responsive, with no wasted energy shifting the mass of superfluous items intended to shield the occupants from bothersome weather or flying insects. Had I the disposable income, this belief would manifest itself in the form of a Lotus, and I use the term disposable here in the most literal sense. It would make more sense to burn said money to heat the atmosphere than to invest it in about ten linear feet of British alloy covered by a thin sheet of brightly colored plastic. But spend it I would, and happily.
My Lotus would not start when I wanted to drive it. It would not get good gas mileage, it would have insurance costs normally associated with amusement park rides, and it would certainly not be comfortable. But I would love it, and it would give me pleasure, even while causing me pain. Good investments are not necessarily smart investments, but my soul would rejoice with every glance at my European sports car. And that is worth more to me than some Smart Beta begging for my retirement funds.
